Weight alone is not the only determining factor when choosing a horse that suits you. The size of your horse should be proportional to you and height, weight and riding skills all need to be considered. The goal is to make the horse’s job as easy as possible so that …
A mature horse can be worked very hard, but if the horse is never given the chance to fully develop before being put to work, how much of his full potential will he ever achieve? When buying, training and starting a young horse – or when looking at problems of …
When you’re buying a horse or pony for the first time, it’s exciting! It’s also too easy to get carried away by a set of soft brown eyes from a horse that is nowhere near suitable for a first-time owner. Remember this: buying the wrong horse can suck all the …
The sense of balance is crucial to your horse and it is important for anyone working with horses to understand how it affects behaviour. Immediately after birth foals being practising to stand. The sensory receptors, called proprioceptors, in the muscles, joints, tendons and skin sense the position of the body …
Eyesight (vision) is the most important sense for your horse. For a prey animal, the constant, vigilant monitoring of the surrounding environment is crucial for survival. Horses are very sensitive to motion and will usually react by trying to get as far away as possible from whatever suddenly entered their …
It’s a common misconception that horses have a thick hide (almost like an elephant), when, in fact, horses have very sensitive skin. Yes, it’s thicker than human skin but it is also loaded with nerve endings. Horses can feel a tiny little fly landing on them and then shake the …
Your horse has excellent hearing and continuously swivels his ears towards different noises in the environment. He has a large field of vision and doesn’t need to turn his head in order to see things around him (like we do). By paying attention to which way the ears are pointing, …
How can you tell if your horse is too fat or too skinny? A vet or nutritionist will give you a more accurate assessment, but for getting a general idea you’re really using a simple scale of too fat, too skinny and just right. Anything other than ‘just right’ is …
It’s important to know how much your horse weighs because both feed amounts and medication dosages are calculated based on the weight of your horse. The most accurate way to weigh your horse is to use a weighbridge or livestock scale (a big scale the horse walks onto). However, most …
It’s always a good time to brush up on your horse’s anatomy. Though you don’t use a lot of the terms daily, it’s good to know which part is named what so that when you’re talking to other people caring for the horse, or the vet, you’ll know that you’re …
A horse’s height is measured from the ground to the highest point of the withers (orange line in the image below) and is expressed in centimetres or as hands high or hh. The height of a horse isn’t a very absolute number because there are many factors that go into …
To have a better relationship with your horse you need to have a better relationship with yourself. As long as you’re not grounded and genuinely connected to yourself, you’re never going to have the kind of relationship with your horse that will blow your mind. To have the kind of …
